Louise McGregor Business

My (Next) Ergonomic Workstation

I saw this image in an article titled “The Most Ridiculous Patents” and for a second I couldn’t see anything wrong with the concept. It’s not that far off from the pose I often adopt to work on my laptop while lying on the couch with a number of pillows supporting my back – although I have a little more hair than the model shown.

ergonomic computer use
ergonomic computer use

OK so maybe it’s not so realistic for work, but it’s no whackier than some of the real economic chairs available.

​ I like the look of the Neber Chair from G-Tech, but rows of them lined up make me think of some weird 1984 scenario. It does look a little like a cross between a Harley Davidson and a workstation.

I’m sure I’d work really quickly in it, and it’s a lot better PCE, which somehow reminds me of medical equipment, or the chairs seen in old peoples’ homes.
​ I’m not sure that this would really help, I feel I’d end up with tired legs. I think it might work for people who … no, I can’t imagine who would ever use this.
​Sitting on a bubble The last entry is very cute, and takes the simple approach, giving you the right height but forcing you to support your back.

I think it could work, but I’d have to unlearn my existing behaviour, namely my tendency to lean way back in my chair.

My favourite is still the ridiculous horizontal one above.
Louise McGregor Communication

Social Media Policies for Employees

Primark has come under fire for comments posted by employees on Facebook, comments that are insulting to customers. It’s not the first time negative comments made on social media have backfired, it seems many people who use social media still aren’t sure where the privacy line should be drawn. It’s clear that companies need to be specific  in setting out their expectations to employees – and it’s something I’ve been working on.

If someone came to you and asked how to use social media what would you say? I’ve been working on social media policies for employees, and I wanted to approach it from a positive perspective rather than being “rule-driven“. Something similar to the approach taken at Intel.

The top policy guidelines for me boil down to;

  1. Respect
    Treat your colleagues and clients with respect; you’re an ambassador for yourself, your team, your company.
  2. Get facts straight
    Write about what you know, check your facts and be prepared to answer follow up questions and respond to comments.
  3. Think
    If it’s online it’s visible; your current employer, your colleagues, your future employer and your grandmother can see this. Do you want them all to know what you’re up to or to witness via photos/video exactly what you’ve been up to?

There’s also a need to keep in mind the company’s property including intellectual property and to remember any security issues that your comments might touch on.

I think it’s easy to be seduced by the ease of using social media, and the feeling of community into saying more than you really want to. And once it’s published it’s out there for all to see. It’s a smart company which comes up with guidelines on responsible use of social media which steer the line between  encouraging and controlling the use of social media by employees.

Louise McGregor Editorial

The World’s Greatest Tech Companies

I read this tweet on July fourth, and I felt a little miffed.

While the companies listed are great in their own way, and they’re registered in the US it’s a pretty big jump from there to “Every great tech company for the past decade is from the US of A.”

Plus, has Twitter made a profit yet? I think Twitter has lots of potential, but if a company has yet to make a profit then it seems a bit odd to listed as the greatest company of any type.

So I dug around and found that BusinessWeek has made a comprehensive analysis of the hottest tech companies for 2009. Their top 10 are;

  1. Amazon (US)
  2. Oracle (US)
  3. SAP (Germany)
  4. Inventec (Taiwan)
  5. IBM (US)
  6. Bharti Airtel (India)
  7. Quanta (Taiwan)
  8. Wistron (Taiwan)
  9. Tencent (China)
  10. Acer (Taiwan)

Google comes in at 37, Facebook and Twitter don’t merit a mention.

Obviously this is a bit of an unfair comparison – the two clearly used very different criteria – but it’s interesting. First of all what criteria should you use? For years Amazon’s high growth led to low or no profits, and now it’s number one, so apparently the BusinessWeek ranking favours established companies rather than new entrants.

I suspect the tweet that started this was a flippant statement rather than the result of a great deal of analysis but it does indicate that the social media companies could be the rising stars; the next Amazons.

But if they are will they be American social media companies? Tencent, listed 9 above, is China’s biggest online chatting company with 400 million users. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the potential for a social media giant to come out of China, or India for that matter.

 

image technology

Louise McGregor design

Usability in Action; Streets

We respond very well to visual clues on how something should be used, in fact we probably respond more to visual clues than to any other sort of clue

visual_signal

I was reminded of that this week when crossing the road – the one shown in the picture. It’s a little difficult to tell, but it’s a crossing and then a traffic island. On the other side of the traffic island – beyond the bicycles – are tram tracks. You can see it on the google satellite map.

Until recently that traffic island used to be a forest of bicycles and you really had to weave your way through them. It annoyed me, I really wanted to just kick the bicycles out of the way and under a passing tram (for the record I did not do this).

When I went through the city on Thursday I noticed that someone has painted a large white rectangle across the island with an ‘X’ in the centre of it. Marking it a no parking zone, and that’s all it took for cyclists to park their bikes in a way that leaves space for pedestrians.

There’s no sign saying that people may not park there, there’s no indication that the painting on the ground was even done officially, it could have been done by a similarly frustrated pedestrian in the wee hours for all I know.

But I’m fascinated that one visual clue is enough to trigger the mass of cyclists to change their behaviour.